When, rising from the bed of death,
O'erwhelmed with guilt and fear,

I see my Maker face to face,

O how shall I appear?

In addition to these five hymns Addison wrote other "pieces of divine poetry." One of them is a sacred eclogue paraphrasing portions of Isaiah. Another is a paraphrase of a portion of Solomon's Song, and another still a rendering of the seventh chapter of Proverbs, while it may be added that a full understanding of the work of Addison in behalf of English letters and character cannot be reached by readers and critics without taking into account his devout Christian spirit and the numerous occasions of which he took advantage to express such an order of sentiment in verse and prose.

Turning to the poetry of Pope, we may note that his well-known ode, "The Dying Christian to His Soul,"

Vital spark of heavenly flame!

Quit, O quit this mortal frame!

is substantially a hymn in its spirit and purpose. Pope's "Universal Prayer," as it is called, a paraphrase, in part, of the Lord's Prayer, and written to justify his position as a Christian theist, is his most notable contribution to hymnology. Made up of thirteen quatrains, it is in reality a tribute to Jehovah as Creator and Lord, and is marked throughout by a reverent and tender spirit. It is one of our great theistic hymns. Two or three stanzas may be cited:

Father of all! in every age,

In every clime, adored,

By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

If I am right, thy grace impart,
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, O teach my heart
To find that better way.

Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.

Coming to the name of William Cowper, we meet with an author who combines, as few English authors have done, the specific religious type of verse with the literary. The Olney Hymns, sixty-eight in number, have become a classic collection in modern hymnology, so that the reader may be referred to the series as it stands. They are memorable not simply by reason of their intrinsic poetic merit, but also because of the peculiarly painful circumstances under which many of them were composed. Perhaps the most notable hymn of the list is the one on Divine Providence, the last of the number, and entitled "Light Shining Out of Darkness:"

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.

The author composed it, we are told, "in the twilight of departing reason." The darkness was indeed deeper than that of twilight, as may be gathered from his remarkable statement, "I have never met, either in books or conversation, with an

experience at all similar to mine;" with an experience, he means, so distressing and hopeless; and yet through such songs as these thousands have been comforted.

In addition to the Olney Hymns he wrote a few miscellaneous verses of a similar order, while some of his translations, as those from the French of Madame Guyon, are essentially hymnic.

From the pen of Thomas Moore, author of the Irish Melodies, we have, strange to say, a collection of "Sacred Songs," thirty-two in number, some of which are exceptionally excellent as hymns. Such are, "Thou Art, O God, the Life and Light," "This World is All a Fleeting Show," "O Thou Who Driest the Mourner's Tear," "The Turf Shall be my Fragrant Shrine," "Sound the Loud Timbrel o'er Egypt's Dark Sea," "Come, ye Disconsolate, Where'er ye Languish."

Many of his odes and miscellaneous poems are veritable hymns, as the lines:

All that's bright must fade.

Hark! the vesper hymn is stealing
O'er the water soft and clear.

Even his Irish Melodies are not without a devotional element. Few things in English letters are stranger than that such a man, the intimate friend of Byron, should have penned such poems; he had, however, the instincts of a genuine lyric bard, and, in the sphere of secular verse, has written some of the choicest songs of English speech.

So we have Coleridge's famous "Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni," and Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," while in such poets as Keats and Wordsworth and Mrs. Browning and Tennyson examples are numerous in which meditative poems border so closely on the line of hymns as to make the difference scarcely discernible. The presence of this devotional element in American literature we have fully discussed elsewhere.*

What Mr. Brookes has called "the theology of the English poets" is thus expressed, from Cædmon to Tennyson, in the form of Christian praise, and serves to give sanctity and moral strength to the expanding volume of our vernacular verse.

* American Meditative Lyrics. E. B. Treat & Co., New York.

CONCLUDING CHAPTER
The Larger Lyric List

E have thus briefly sketched what may be called the historical development of the British reflective lyric from the days of Elizabeth to Victoria, emphasizing the work of Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Mrs. Browning, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, and Tennyson, as also those special forms of such lyric illustrated in the sphere of elegiac and devotional verse. As stated in the Preface, no attempt has been made to compass the large and inviting list of such representative authors, sufficient names being presented to indicate the general spirit and value of such a line of lyric poetry. Hence the merest reference to such notable names as Coleridge, author of "Christabel," "The Ancient Mariner," and such pensive poems as "Truth and Age" and "The Good, Great Man;" Landor, author of "The Maid's Lament" and the touching lines "To the Sister of Elia; " Burns, in his "Auld Lang Syne," "Honest Poverty," "The Cotter's Saturday Night,” and the characteristic lines "To Mary in Heaven;" Shelley, in his "Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples," and in such poems as "The Cloud," "Autumn-a Dirge," and "To-Night;" Moore, in his poems, "Hath Sorrow thy Young Days Shaded?"